The Fire Blood
by bumblebeeteacup10
Summary: One Shot- Percy's point of view. Percy catches wind of a kid who shows all the typical symptoms and side effects of being a demi-god, only when he sends some satyrs after them, they never return. With further investigation the trio opens the doors to a world of completely uncharted territory , fusion of Hindu Mythology in to the world of Percy Jackson.


The smell invaded my nostrils as we stepped farther in to the alleyway. I looked over at Annabeth scrunching her face up, almost gagging at the stench, but her knife still at the ready. No human thing could possible smell this bad, like a rotting tuna left under the sun on an 80 degree sidewalk, and then wrapped in sweaty gym shorts. I tried to think of something that I might have learned about or fought before that should have come with the warning label "Hazardous Stench" but nothing came to mind, nothing that stank this bad anyway. This thing, whatever it was made the Minotaur seem like a fresh spring daisy. I glanced over at Annabeth silently asking whether she'd been able to pin what kind of monster this must be, but she just shrugged her shoulders, her arm now covering her nose.

"Well we must be in the right place, this is exactly what Sampson described" Grover said from somewhere, his voice wavering.

You see this all started about 3 months ago when Grover had been alerted about an 11 year old kid in New Jersey who'd been thrown out of school 5 times already for "Unusual Circumstances" and "Disciplinary problems", had dyslexia, and the whole shebang. He decided to send Sampson, one of the best Satyrs he trained, to go find the kid, see if he was a half blood, and bring him back to camp if he was. About 2 months ago Sampson had dragged himself over the property line looking as if he'd had a run in with the Italian Mafia, gashes and cuts all over his body, his left eye a slit in a black and blue circle, his right eye wide and crazed as if it had seen the depths of Tartarus. All he managed to stutter out was a jumbled mess about giants and fire and a really rotten smell before he passed out.

The next day when he finally came to, he began telling us of some kind of giant woman decked out in gleaming jewels and fancy clothes with large fangs and tusks protruding out of her mouth and a gravelly devilish voice, saying utter gibberish he couldn't understand.

"Are you sure it wasn't a Cyclops?" Annabeth asked, but Sampson violently shook his head no and began assuring her that it had two eyes. Suddenly he jumped out towards me and clamped his hands on the collar of my shirt before I could move out of the way.

"Save him Percy! That poor kid, he doesn't stand a chance!" his grassy breath shouted at me as Grover and Annabeth attempted to pry him off. Finally the Apollo kids came in to calm him down and heal him some more, putting him back to sleep as he muttered about fire and mutton and aluminum cans. The whole meeting left the three of us spooked. Safe to say I left the room utterly disturbed and I guess I looked it too cause as we walked out Annabeth slipped her hand it mine and squeezed it reassuringly.

"We'll find the kid Seaweed brain, don't worry about it".

"It's not just that," I replied "Sampson sounded…insane, I'm getting a bad feeling about this."

"He was one of my top students," Grover responded, "Whatever he found there, I don't think we can just chalk it up to insanity."

Annabeth and I nodded grimly. In the following weeks Grover sent 3 more Satyrs, to try to bring this kid to camp. We lost contact with two and the third came back in a worse condition than Sampson. At this point Grover's face would probably have been a sufficient description in a dictionary for the word anxiety. He'd eaten so many coffee filters and aluminum cans that Demeter was probably having a field day on how great the grounds looked. Grover finally decided that he would go investigate and bring this kid back himself, and after whacking him with a book for implying that he would go alone, Annabeth made the executive decision that all three of us were going.

That's how we ended up combing the streets of Edison, New Jersey (We're New Yorkers, we would never willingly go to New Jersey without good reason) looking for a half-blood. We went to the kid's home address first, but found that no one was there. Pretty luckily I'd say, I have no idea what we would have said if he had answered… it's not like you can just knock on the door and say _Hey kid you're a half-blood, so leave your parents and come with me, this girl, and my goat legged friend to a camp in another state, because your life is in peril…_ that would not end well. Grover thought about waiting for the kid to come back, but then remembered that his family had a small restaurant that he could have possibly been at.

Great, I was starving anyway. We made our way to the downtown area, Annabeth and I strolling down the sidewalk, Grover wearing Annabeth's baseball cap to stay unnoticed and avoid wearing fake feet. It was filled with little shops and a surprising amount of Indian restaurants and stores, there were even Indian movies in the theatres; the area we were in was called India Square, go figure. We saw the little restaurant with a beaten down sign reading Vaishnavi Grill that supposedly belonged to the Lakhani family. We walked over to it but before we could walk in Annabeth grabbed my arm and dragged me over in to the alleyway next to the building.

"What is it?" I asked her, stumbling, and then feeling an invisible Grover bump in to me. She walked over to some gleaming object lying on the side of the alleyway and picked it up. It was a large gold colored object the size of my forearm (judging by the strain in Annabeth's arms while trying to lift it, it was most likely real gold). It was a large circle with thin golden chains coming out of the bottom, the face of the circle encrusted with diamonds and rubies in a spiraling pattern. The top of the circle had a long stem with a hook at the end of it.

"What…a really extra wall decoration?" I asked looking at the gaudy gold piece.

"I don't think it's a wall hanging," Annabeth replied, "I think it's an...earring". I stared at the thing wide eyed and a small bleat from Grover behind me told me he was as terrified as I was.

"Is it too much to hope that this thing just has really big ears?" I asked wondering what we had done so wrong that the Gods kept us this ill-fated. Couldn't we get a break like once? Apparently not cause that's when the ground began shaking, the earth trembling beneath us. I uncapped my pen and released Riptide, the sword gleaming in the dark alleyway. Annabeth unsheathed her knife, and I could hear the rustling as Grover retrieved his reedpipes from his pouch. That's when the smell hit. So now we're back in the part where we gag in an alleyway in New Jersey, the armpit of America to begin with. The ground began to settle but just as we were relaxing there was a large THUD! right behind us. I swung riptide around, the blade smoothly cutting through the air. Instead of some monster there was a scrawny little dark skinned boy with black wavy hair that looked scared out of his wits at the tip of my blade.

"Who…Who are you?" the kid asked. I lowered my blade

"Don't worry we're not gonna hurt you" Annabeth said from behind me, "Are you Raj Lakhani?". The boy slowly nodded yes. "Okay…" Annabeth said, I could tell even she wasn't entirely sure what to say, " Do you have a parent, in the restaurant, I think they'd know why we're here." Raj seemed slightly more comfortable now that our blades were down but he was still on edge. "I have my aunt and uncle inside," he replied.

"And your parents?" Raj looked down as Annabeth asked the question.

"Oh" Annabeth said. Oh indeed. If his parent had never told the aunt and uncle that the kid was a demi-god he had no real way of knowing, since he still hadn't been claimed. Maybe he was the kid of minor god and that's why the monsters hadn't found him for so long. Well except the giant… who was suspiciously good at hiding. Ugh, I should have forced the Gods to claim the children even earlier than 13, tips for next time I save Olympus and the world and get any wish I want granted from the Gods.

"So Raj," I started, "Any odd things been happening to you lately? Things normal people seem not to do?"

" Percy!" Annabeth cried.

"What?"

"You can't just ask him that Seaweed brain."

BOOM!

We all stopped and stared straight up at the sky.

BOOM!

Now Raj looked really terrified,

"Not again" he muttered. Wait, not again?

"What do you mean not ag….?"

ROOOOAAAARRR!

I looked up to see a giant emerging figure of a woman ragdolling her way in to a standing position towering what seemed like 5 stories above us. She had a mop of black hair and when it rolled out of her face, I came to understand why Sampson had looked so crazed.

Her face looked human except there was a clear blood lust in her eyes, kind of like what you would imagine to see in the eyes of a serial killer but 100 times worse, a pair of enormous fangs stuck out of her mouth on to her lips, with red coloring surrounding her mouth, whether it was blood or lipstick I still to this day have no idea. She was decked out in a shimmering red pleated skirt (maybe it was baggy pants I couldn't really figure it out) with large bulky golden jewelry cuffing her wrists and neck. Sure enough the matching pair to the earring in the alleyway, dangled from her sagging earlobe. Now I've faced monsters that looked worse than even this lady more times than I could count. What terrified me the most was that when I looked over at Annabeth, she just stared at me shaking her head from side to side, her eyes alarmed, even she could not tell me what this thing was. The beast's wicked eyes focused on us and she sneered, flashing a row of yellowing, jagged, knife like teeth. She began streaming out lines of gibberish in a demonic voice that sounded as if she used all the voices of the bodies she consumed at once.

"Is that just a weird battle cry?" Grover asked, from somewhere.

"No, she said that she's been hunting me for a while and can't wait to eat you guys too….for whoever asked" Raj replied.

"You can understand her?" I asked in surprise. Raj simply nodded slowly. Wow I knew I needed to brush up on my Ancient Greek but I never knew how bad. Even Annabeth didn't know what she was saying, was there more than one dialect of Greek? Pig-Latin Greek? I would have contemplated it further but the monstrous lady was not having it. She bent over as if to scoop us up in one hand.

" Raj RUN!" I shouted but the kid was locked in place, frozen with fear. As her hand came down I slashed at it with Riptide, slitting the skin which probably really felt like a paper cut to her, but she recoiled a little in surprise, it didn't seem to affect her in the way it did every other monster…weird. She continued to stretch her arm forwards, I stabbed downwards, I saw Annabeth slash with her knife, while a still invisible Grover pushed Raj and forced him to run, stumbling down the alleyway, but the monstrous hand pursued its pray, all our slashing just a minor grievance. Think Percy think, that's when out of the corner of my eye I saw a fire hydrant, this would be a whole new ball game now.

AHHHHHHHHHHH!

Before I could even conjure the water the giant Lady was screaming the hand that had been reaching for Raj now on fire. I looked towards the scrawny kid who was now standing in a ring of fire, a wall of flame surrounding him, coming from the ground around him and out of his eyes, mouth, and arms from the forearms down. I was stunned. No Demi-God I had ever known could do that. Hestia was the goddess of the hearth, but she'd sworn she would never have children… so whose son was Raj, that let him do that? Hephaestus maybe?As quickly as the fire appeared it disappeared, Raj crumbling to hover in mid-air, probably caught by the still invisible Grover. I looked back towards the monster gripping her seared hand, and shooting us a look of sheer rage, she lashed out, her clawed fingers looking to impale us. I concentrated on the flow of the water in the hydrant, itching to come out, and it a sudden gush the top of the hydrant flew off, nailing the giant lady in the eye before gushing water in a jet, at her face. She stumbled back the water pressure too much even for her. I felt the rush of water from the pipes in the sewer grates beneath the roads pull towards me too. As the hydrant water pushed her to one side I called the water on the other, the sewage cap exploding off and nailing her in the nose. Another storm drain grate popped off hitting her in her flabby stomach, and now I had three jets of water pummeling water at her mouth, nose, and body. Suddenly I felt a pull in my gut that made me double over. As I got up I saw the water was still rushing like a jet at her outstretched hands that were trying to block it, but what was originally acting like a jet began to crash around her face, creating a globe of water around her head, only I wasn't controlling it. _The water was not responding to me._ Now I've never had a panic attack, but this moment was about the closest I've ever gotten to having one. I tried to feel the strength of the water, find that feeling that had come so naturally for the last four years, I even resorted to pleading to my Dad (Poseidon) himself. Anytime I got anywhere near a tug of control it was grasped away from me, as if I was playing a pathetic game of tug of war. I looked over at Annabeth helplessly and she looked at me concerned. That's not me I mouthed to her, wildly gesturing my hands to prove my point. She stared in horrified confusion and awe, and that's when it got even weirder. All of a sudden, rats began to crawl up from everywhere, towards the demon lady still floundering in her orb of hydrant, sewage, and rain water. They scurried up to the woman biting and nipping her skin, causing her to stomp her feet in pain but the rats simply scurried aside or clung on, continuing to nibble, scratch, and bite. The sky rumbled, and the orb around the monster's head parted, the giant lady choking out water and gasping for air. I noticed a black cloaked figure standing on one of the roofs, waving its hands down, and the water that had originally just parted now crashed down on the monster. This hidden cloaked figure was controlling the water, I have found another child of Poseidon. Suddenly the figure leapt off of the roof and with visible force, blasted the monster with a bolt of lightning. Spoke to soon. Child of Poseidon and Zeus? Definitely no. At the final blow, the monster let out a cry and began to dissolve in to little particles of red sand and dust, blowing away in the wind in to nothingness.

The rats all scurried back to where they had come from and the water began to seep back in to the holes and grates. This was when I wondered what mortals truly saw out of all of this, they didn't have the sight, but how their brains would make sense of the things that happened that they could see, I have no idea.

The alleyway was left eerily quiet. All the four of us could do (The cap now off of Grover's head) was stare, our mouths hanging open, all of us, even those of us who'd known we were Demi- Gods the whole time, utterly confused by the events that had just come to pass. One tall hooded figure in dark blue stood at the opening of the alleyway, and a few moments later, the shorter figure in black who had conjured up the lightening and controlled the water joined it. The two strode down the alleyway filled with purpose, looking like a pair of assassins as they marched down the alley towards us. They stopped a few feet from Annabeth and me and slowly took off their hoods, revealing a boy and a girl who couldn't have been much older than us. The boy had pale skin and jet black spikey hair that matched his near black eyes. He had some form red powder swiped vertically up his forehead. The figure in black was a girl who couldn't have been more than 5'3", had long brown hair, with coffee skin but startling blue eyes. On her forehead was a dot of the red powder but also a dot of some yellow powder as well. I imagined that this was probably what we seemed like to Raj, the first time he saw us, poor kid.

"Who are you" I asked in a voice that came out partially whispery.

It was the girl who spoke, "I am Radhika, daughter of Indra, God of Lightning, storms, and flowing water. This is Kiran, son of Ganesha, God of wisdom and good fortune. We have come to protect the son of Agni."

The sons and daughters of who now?

"Ummmmmm… Hi… Percy…. son of Poseidon, this is Annabeth daughter of Athena, and that's Grover, he's a satyr."

"So the strange goat boys do belong to your people?" the girl, Radhika asked me.

The boy muttered something that sounded a lot like "I told you so."

Grover stepped forward then, "You've seen more?"

The boy nodded and said "Two of them, they had a run in with the Rakshasine, seemed not to know what to do, think they would have been trained better. They were hurt pretty badly so we sent them to our temporary camp." The girl, Radhika, elbowed him at the harsh comment, but Grover just let out a sigh of relief at knowing that his two Satyrs were not eaten by the monster, the Rakshasine as they had called it.

"Wait Indra… Ganesha…. I know that." Annabeth said her face scrunching up, "Those are the Indian Gods,"

"Hindu Gods" the boy corrected bitterly glowering at them.

"Those exist too?" I asked

"What did you think your little world was special?" Kiran spat, at which he received another elbow from the Radhika. Radhika now spoke, "Yes they are as real as your Greek ones, but they seem to always reside farther East of yours, their stronghold has actually shifted to London recently, just as your Greek ones have shifted to the West, to America."

"You know about the Greek Gods?" I asked now directing my conversation solely towards her as the boy continuously kept giving us hostile glances with all of our questions. She simply nodded. "Yes we learn a little about who protects each section of the world. As you travel you will find that more is real, than any of the regular humans will care to believe, we learn it at camp to know what we are up against, though," she said looking at Grover, " I admit I was shocked to find people that looked like you."

"It's still more than they know," Kiran muttered at which Radhika simply rolled her eyes.

"Don't mind him, he gets annoyed with anyone who doesn't know as much as him, which is most people."

"That's why our weapons didn't work as well!" Annabeth marveled, "They weren't meant for your monsters. That's why we couldn't understand her but Raj could! It wasn't Greek it was Sanskrit!"

Kirin smirked, which I think was about as close to a smile as would ever come from him.

"I like her" he said matter of factly, "she has the courtesy of common knowledge".

"So that monster…?" I questioned. Kiran frowned again.

"A Rakshasine, a typical monster from our mythology. This one seemed to be able to change sizes from normal to large, that's why we had such a hard time tracking her. She looks like a fairly regular human when she's normal sized. She has a particular wrath against Agni, that's probably how she tracked Raj all the way here." Radhika explained, now focusing her attention on Raj who looked exasperated.

"So the Rakshasines from the stories, they're real? Indra, Ganpati, Shankar, Parvati…" Raj whispered.

"Yes their all real" Radhika said smiling reassuringly, Raj's face washed over with relief,

"So I'm not crazy?"

"About as crazy as us." Kirin said, which didn't seem to comfort him. To be fair I wouldn't have been comforted by that statement either.

"So now what?" Raj asked.

"Well," Radhika replied, "Now we must bring you back to London, train you so you'll be prepared the next time you have to fight those things."

"Next time!?" Raj shouted, "You mean those things are going to keep coming after me forever. Why? I didn't do anything! And London! I can't go to London! Why would…" In a flash Kiran had moved forward and in 3 quick hand jabs, Raj was passed out in his arms.

"Kiran! How many times have I told you that you can't just do that to every half-blood we have to bring to camp!" the girl shouted exasperated.

"What? He was freaking out. It'll be much easier if he forgets, comes to London for "Summer Camp" and figures it out there."

"You're gonna get us in trouble one day."

"But that day has not come yet" he replied.

"Ughmm" I coughed to remind them that the three of us were still there. Radhika looked over at us and pointed, "See we're not leaving a very good impression".

Kiran just looked over at us, "I can make them forget everything too if you want" The three of us tensed up at that, which made him snicker, Jerk.

"Well," "Radhika said, "I think we'll take it from here, I'm not sure what you would do with a child of Agni at a Greek camp anyway. If you ever need help and are in London, you have friends there now." She said smiling holding out her hand.

"Umm, yeah, thanks…If you guys ever need help in New York you can count on us for that." I said shaking it, at which Kiran muttered something that sounded like Yeah Right.

"Our temporary camp here before we go back to London is just about ten minutes outside of Trenton, in what is supposed to be a farm. That is where you can pick up your Satyrs as you call them. Your camp director should know where it is to send some campers to pick them up." Radhika said.

"Thank you, Thank you very much," Grover said.

"You are very welcome" Radhika said. "Well Percy son of Poseidon, Annabeth daughter of Athena, and Grover the Satyr, until we meet again." The girl said. Kiran simply nodded at Annabeth, only deeming her worthy of his acknowledgement carrying Raj in his arms, and the two walked out of the alleyway disappearing almost instantly, in to the town in front of them. We were all simply left standing there dumbfounded.

"So what do we tell Chiron" Grover asked, "We can't just go back empty handed."

"Well according to them Chiron knows they exist," Annabeth responded, "So I guess we just tell him he wasn't Greek. He was the son of Agni, God of fire."

And that was when I learned that Hindu God's exist, (and probably brought the wrath of Kiran on to me.)


End file.
